Cafe Salsa
I’m a little late in writing this, but who knows where the time goes. On Saturday, Marlyn and I went out to eat lunch at Cafe Salsa, a Cuban-style restaurant in downtown Alexandria.
I’d say it was pretty authentic feeling inside. You don’t get chips and salsa but instead fried-banana slices with a hearty olive-based dip. I liked it.
As an appetizer, Marlyn and I ordered some Seafood Ceviche, which was served without tostadas and made it quite awkward to eat. As usual, the Ceviche was served cold but they had to use a lot of lemon juice to hide the seafood flavor from the shrimp, scallops, fish and squid. The lemon juice made it taste odd and without a necessary crunch I didn’t care for this dish (although it was OK when I started to eat it with the banana chips).
As a main course, I ordered the Nueva Ropa Vieja, which was basically a barbacoa-style beef stewed with bell peppers served on rice with cooked bananas. Marlyn liked the bananas the best, but I really like the way the beef tasted. I would order it again.
Marlyn ordered something not on the online menu, it had grilled cornmeal on the outside and its a famous dish, although I can’t remember it now. It was pretty good, probably better than my dish.
We split a desert, which was the first time I’ve ever had Flan. I have to say, it was pretty good and I was very surprised. I think the Flan was the best thing on the menu, if that says anything.
The atmosphere in the place was only OK. I felt that the dishes might have been dirty and there was a guy on a date wearing a bluetooth headset that was annoying the crap out of me (although it had nothing to do with the restaurant itself). I would like to go back to Cafe Salsa to try out some other dishes, but truthfully that wont happen for a while given we have higher priority restaurants.
